What is Git?

Version control system which essentially keeps track of a group of files and their history. You could think of it as the phylogenetic tree of your files.

A repository is a collection of files within a group that gets tracked together.

Why Github?

Github, GitLab, and BitBucket are all similar and they provide hosting services, which is basically a home for your project on the internet.

It’s like having a DropBox or GoogleDrive but for git-based projects.

This allows other people to see your stuff, synchronize it, and contribute.

Some Github features

• Well-designed user interface
• Issues originally a bug tracker but highly underutilized in our fields
• R and Github integration is nicer due to the active R package development community.

An intro on this can be found here

How to work with Git and Github?

For the R user, best simple straightforward resource out there is Happy git with R

Github itself has a dedicated section for learning in the docs and in particular, the Hello World tutorial will get you creating a repo, managing a branch and merging a pull request.

Artwork by @allison_horst

Branches and pull requests

1. Create Branch to make a change.
2. Commit changes to the new branch.
3. Open Pull request to merge the changes to main branch.
4. Optional and recommended: delete branch

Also known as a feature branch workflow

source https://www.nobledesktop.com/learn/git/git-branches